n. something that indicates or fixes a limit or extent –
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, true, but sometimes one has to erect one and defend it anyway. Sometimes, the words, “thus far, no further,” are a thing you have to take seriously enough to set into words firmly – whether it’s your weight creeping up and you declare a moratorium on snackage, or it’s your siblings encroaching, and you have to smack down a line of masking tape down the center of your room. Sometimes, we need longer, stronger words for STOP. Boundaries, people. Use them. Respect them.
“…Before I built a wall I’d ask to know…”
Mr. Frost, your walls
which you question, do but serve
the cause, “Sanity.”
Applying Brakes
“I hear what you’ve said,
but, listen; if you would just –”
We circle again.
in the end, I still win
given time, water
works its will. All wear down,
save the broken sands.
We do, indeed, circle again. I particularly like that one, Tanita.
I can honestly hear people saying the same thing over and over and I think, “Really? Is this how far we haven’t gotten?”
Answer: yes.
I do not care for Frost. I always get the sense from his poems of an unpleasant surety of his own rightness….as for me, I love a wall…what would the Secret Garden be without its walls? I would rather be invited into a walled garden, than sit in the public park…..
Hahah! I have to say that being forced to recite so much Frost as kids might have to do with my distaste – I do believe you’re right; he has an unshaken certainty like Ezra Pound in his words… and I can’t stand Pound. Huh.
I guess I like uncertainty, in a poet.
I like walls.
I also like mazes.
And doors. I think I may like doors best of all… screen doors sometimes, sure, but doors…
And there’s no reason that walls cannot be low~so as to mark a health-giving boundary and yet allow conversation over the top of it.
True. Good back fences make good neighbors? 😉